The British Government is Reportedly Since its previous claim, Apple to create a secret backdoor by allowing its principles access to customer data worldwide after a harsh reproach by the US government. But a US senator wants to know if other technological giants, such as Google, have also received secret backdoor requirements from the UK government.
Google has declined to answer the legislator’s questions, but since then he has told TechCrunch that the technological giant has not received demand in the backdoor, marking the first time Google has confirmed that it is not subject to a similar UK command.
Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that the office at the UK house requested a secret court order in the UK Surveillance Court Demanding that Apple allow the United Kingdom Authorities to access the cloud -to -end -to -end encrypted cloud data stored to any customer in the world, including iPhone and iPad backups. Apple encrypts the data in such a way that only customers, not Apple, can access their data stored on its servers.
According to the United Kingdom Law, technology companies subject to secret surveillance court orders, such as Apple, are legally prohibited from disclosing details about an order or existence of the class itself, despite the fact that Details of demand that is leaking public earlier this year. Critics called the secret order against Apple “Draconian”, saying it would have a global consequences for users’ privacy. Apple has since appealed to the legality of the order.
In a new letter He is sent to the leading US Officer Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday, Senator Ron Wyden, who is serving in the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that while technology companies cannot say if they have received a UK mandate, at least one technological giant confirmed.
Meta, which uses end to end to protect the user messages sent between WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, told Wyden’s office on March 17 that the company “has not been ordered to return our encrypted services, as mentioned for Apple”.
Google, for its part, would not tell Wyden’s office if he had received a UK government order to access encrypted data, such as backups by Android, “only that if he had received a notification of technical capabilities, he would be banned from disclosing this fact,” Wyden said.
Google spokesman, Karl Ryan, told TechCrunch in a statement: “We have never built any mechanism or” backdoor “to bypass end -to -end encryption. If we say that a product is end -to -end, it is.”
When explicitly asked by TechCrunch, Ryan said: “We have not received a notice of technical capabilities”, referring to any UK surveillance order.
Wyden’s letter first mentioned by The Washington Post and shared with TechCrunchHe called on GABBARD to publicize the “evaluation of the national security risks entitled by the laws on the UK and the reported secret demands of US companies”.
This story was updated with an additional comment by Google, shared in response to a TechCrunch survey.
